Holiday Tales: Christmas in the Adirondacks

by W. H. H. Murray

"Yis, them be the very words I writ," said the Trapper, gravely.

"And I saw more than the words written on the bark, John Norton," resumed the man. "For looking at it I saw all my past life and the evil of it and what a scoundrel I had become; my eyes saw with a new sight, and I said, when the sun comes I will rise and go to the man who wrote those words and tell him what they did for me. And here I am, a vagabond who has accepted your invitation to spend Christmas with you, and here in this pack are the skins and the traps I have stolen from you, and I ask your forgiveness and that you will take my hand in proof of it, that I may come to your table feeling that I am a man, and a vagabond no longer."

"Heart and hand be yours now and forever, Shanty Jim," cried the Trapper, joyfully; and, rising from his chair, he met the outstretched hand of the repentant vagabond with his own hearty grasp. "And may the Lord be with ye ever more."

"Amen!" It was Wild Bill, the once drunkard, who said the sweet word of prayer and assent, and he said it softly. And that murmur of amen and amen went round the great table like the murmur of prayer and of praise. And then it passed out and rose up from the cabin, and the air in its joy passed it on, and the stars took it up and thrilled it around their vast courses of glorified light, and through the high heavens it sang itself onward from order to order of angels until it reached Him whom no man hath seen or may ever see, in all and over all, God! blessed forever!

Has Nature knowledge? Is she conscious of the evil and the good among men, and has she a heart that saddens at their sorrow and rejoices in their joy? Perhaps. For, suddenly, even as the two men joined their hands, the fury of the storm checked itself, and a stillness—the stillness of a great calm—fell on the woods, and through the sudden, the unexpected, the blessed stillness, to the ears of one of the two men—yea, to him who had forgiven—there came the melody of bells swinging slowly and softly to and fro.

Oh, bells, invisible bells! Bells of the soul, bells high in heaven, swing softly, swing low, swing sweet, and swing ever for us, one and all, when we at our tables sit feasting. Swing for us living, swing for us dying, and may the cause of your swinging be our forgiving and forgetting.

"John Norton," said the man, "you have called me Shanty Jim, and that is well, for in the woods here that is my name, but in the city where I lived and whence I fled, fled because of my misdeeds, years ago, I have another name, a name of power and wealth and honor for more than two centuries. There I have a home, and in that home to-night sits my aged father and white-haired mother. I am going back to them clothed and in my right mind. Think of it, Old Trapper, going back to my home, my boyhood's home, to my father and my mother. All day as I tramped on the trail toward your cabin, my mind has been filled with memories of the past, and the words of a sweet old song I used to sing when too young to feel the tenderness of it, have been ringing in my ears."

"Sing us the song, sing us the song!" cried Wild Bill, and every man at the table cried with him, "Sing us the song!"

"Aye, aye," assented the Trapper, "sing us the song, Shanty Jim; we be men of the woods at this table, and some of us have had losses and sorrers, and all of us have memories of happy days that be gone. Stand here by my side and sing us the song that has been ringin' in yer ears all day. This is a table of feastin', and feastin' means more than eatin'. Sing us the song that tells ye of the past, of yer boyhood's days and father and mother."

Oh, the secrets of the woods! How many have fled to them for concealment and refuge! In them piety has built its retreat, learning has sought retirement, broken pride a mask, and misfortune a haven. And in response to the Trapper's invitation there had come to his cabin and were now grouped about his table more of ability, more of knowledge, more of struggle and failure, and more of reminiscence than might be found, perhaps, in the same number of guests at any other table on that Christmas day in the world.